A Quick Word On That Whole Two Oscar Speeches Thing

So the word is that the Academy Awards producers want all of this year’s Oscar nominees to prepare two speeches in the event they win a little gold statute. The first speech would be delivered on stage, and it’s supposed to be sweeping and emotional and they’d really like if you cried. The second speech (optional) can be delivered backstage, to something called the "Thank You Cam," which we assume is just Howie Mandel with an iPhone, and in this speech you can thank your agent, your lawyer, your publicist, the limo driver, your stylist, your plastic surgeon, your plastic surgeon’s plastic surgeon, "Marty Scorcese," etc, etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

The idea of this move is to cut down the endless stream of inconsequential Thank You’s that always gum up the Oscar telecast. The new producers want to streamline the show and get all of us to bed before midnight, and that’s a worthy (if impossible) mission. But this push for two speeches ignores an important point: inconsequential Thank You’s are the reason Hollywood goes to the Oscars. You might think they exist to entertain civilians—LOL—but the Academy Awards are, at their heart, a massive industry back pat, and now they’re trying to eliminate the back pat. It’s an honorable but comical denial of the ceremony’s underlying purpose. You think people want to get up there and thank their 7th grade drama coach? As Buddha might say to Richard Gere, if you can’t thank your agent, why even have the Oscars? (On a side note, we do admire the very Hollywoodian math of the two-speech edict: We have too many speeches, so whaddaya say we solve this by....making everyone do two speeches! You can almost see the Marx Brothers movie.)

If we really want to enliven the Oscar telecast with two speeches, we suggest breaking it up accordingly: the Spin speech and the Truth speech. In the Spin speech, the winner will say the right, humble things, strike the correct emotional chord, and raise his or her stature in the business. In the truth speech, he or she will tell it like it is, winning legions of new admirers swayed by their blunt honesty. Everyone wins!

Here’s how this Spin/Truth formula might play out with a handful of presumed 2010 Oscar winners:

BEST ACTOR: JEFF BRIDGES FOR CRAZY HEART

** **Spin speech: Thank you very much for recognizing this little movie we all cared so deeply about. As the Dude might say, this little Oscar will really "tie the room together."

Truth speech: I make more from one Hyundai voiceover than I did for this home movie. Let’s get Iron Man 3 greenlit, pronto, and bring back Obadiah; I have a squash court that needs resurfacing.

BEST ACTRESS: SANDRA BULLOCK FOR THE BLIND SIDE

** ****Spin speech: **I can’t believe this, I don’t deserve to be here, I was just honored to be nominated alongside Meryl.

**Truth speech: **Sure, I’ll do Miss Congeniality 3—the price just went to $40 million! Meryl, you can play my mother. No—my grandmother!